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Considering Pastry Chefs as World-Class Artists
Since as long as I can remember I wanted to be an artist. A photographer, specifically. I got my first camera (a 35mm manual rangefinder) before entering high school and by the time I was 17 I had purchased my first SLR (an Olympus OM-1) and started working for a professional portrait and landscape photogapher. At the age of 22 I entered the photograhy program at Rhode Island School of Design - where my horizons expanded exponentially. (RISD even had a culinary arts program at the time.)
Prior to RISD, my real knowledge and understanding of art was completely photo-centered. While at RISD I was not only exposed to the entire breadth and depth of Art History, I had first-hand experience with a wide variety of new (to me) media, from apparel to conceptual performance art to weaving. Because of my first-hand experience I grew to appreciate just how talented people who were really good as painters, ceramicists, weavers, printmakers, clothing designers, filmmakers - and more - really, are. I knew that they saw the world differently from the way I did and that they possessed skills in interpreting and articulating their view of the world in ways that I would never be able to approach.
I attended my first World Pastry Forum and World Pastry Team Championship week in 2002 in Las Vegas. There I met a host of world-class pastry chefs working in a diverse range of new (to me) media. I marveled at the work that was produced, from the smallest bonbon to the tallest showpiece. But I do have to say that I did not have a true understanding of what it took in terms of artistic skills to produce work, let alone compete, at that level.
I've been to every World Pastry Forum and Pastry Team Championship since 2002 in a variety of roles: Member of the press, instructor, and as a member of the staff helping produce the events - working with volunteers, students, and sponsors to deliver a high-quality experience. And still I just superficially marveled at the work, never really questioning what it took in the way of artistic and technical skills to produce work at that level.
Until this year in Phoenix at the 2009 World Pastry Forum and National Pastry Team Championship
What made it possible for me to really focus on the artistic talent and level of skill required to be a top-flight pastry chef this year was photographing all of the classes during the World Pastry Forum and then working with the video crew during the Championship. What I came to realize over the course of the week watching closely is that world-class pastry chefs are among the most talented artists on the planet.
How can that be? And go largely unrecognized? The second part is easy to explain, and it's rooted in the the dynamics of the art market and the fact that you really can't collect entremets glaces or bonbons or sugar or chocolate showpieces. If you could, well I can imagine that the showpieces from the last several Worlds might command tens of thousands of dollars or more. (At a cynical level I would make the case that by taking a page from the playbook of "conceptual" art, the instructions to create these works - and the exclusive right to reproduce them - could be sold to collectors for tens of thousands. All that's required to pull it off is the marketing genius of the likes of Mary Boone or Andy Warhol.)
My claim that world-class Pastry Chefs are among the most talented artists in the world is also easy to explain. How many other artists can you name are expert in so many different media and techniques?
They need to know the technical qualities of several forms of crystallized chocolate and how to cast and mold it in many different ways. Same for sugar: Pastillage, pressed sugar, cast sugar, blown sugar, pulled sugar. They need to be superb sculptors able to imagine and then erect complicated structures in three dimensions ranging from massive pillars to delicate lacework fans, globes, orbs, and delicate flowers that would astonish Mother Nature were she to see them. They also need to be superb illustrators and command great skills with airbrush and other painterly media. This combination of skills alone should classify great Pastry Chefs among the most accomplished artists of this (or any other) era.
But wait! There's more! No other art medium than pastry also requires its master practitioners to be experts in taste. Not only do great Pastry Chefs have to have the skills to produce beautiful showpieces, they must also create masterworks to be eaten: Plated desserts, petits gateaux, entremets, entremets glaces, bonbons. Not only must these artworks be individual visual works of art they must also taste good. Pastry chefs work in layers and merinques and glazes and caramels and pralines and ganaches and gelees and foams and brix and tastes and textures and more and more and more and and and ... an astonishing range of media and techniques that should confound anyone who truly took the time to sit down and question what was really going on in the atlelier of a world class pastry chef.
As I did for 8 days in July. As I hope you'll do.
Prior to RISD, my real knowledge and understanding of art was completely photo-centered. While at RISD I was not only exposed to the entire breadth and depth of Art History, I had first-hand experience with a wide variety of new (to me) media, from apparel to conceptual performance art to weaving. Because of my first-hand experience I grew to appreciate just how talented people who were really good as painters, ceramicists, weavers, printmakers, clothing designers, filmmakers - and more - really, are. I knew that they saw the world differently from the way I did and that they possessed skills in interpreting and articulating their view of the world in ways that I would never be able to approach.
I attended my first World Pastry Forum and World Pastry Team Championship week in 2002 in Las Vegas. There I met a host of world-class pastry chefs working in a diverse range of new (to me) media. I marveled at the work that was produced, from the smallest bonbon to the tallest showpiece. But I do have to say that I did not have a true understanding of what it took in terms of artistic skills to produce work, let alone compete, at that level.
I've been to every World Pastry Forum and Pastry Team Championship since 2002 in a variety of roles: Member of the press, instructor, and as a member of the staff helping produce the events - working with volunteers, students, and sponsors to deliver a high-quality experience. And still I just superficially marveled at the work, never really questioning what it took in the way of artistic and technical skills to produce work at that level.
Until this year in Phoenix at the 2009 World Pastry Forum and National Pastry Team Championship
What made it possible for me to really focus on the artistic talent and level of skill required to be a top-flight pastry chef this year was photographing all of the classes during the World Pastry Forum and then working with the video crew during the Championship. What I came to realize over the course of the week watching closely is that world-class pastry chefs are among the most talented artists on the planet.
How can that be? And go largely unrecognized? The second part is easy to explain, and it's rooted in the the dynamics of the art market and the fact that you really can't collect entremets glaces or bonbons or sugar or chocolate showpieces. If you could, well I can imagine that the showpieces from the last several Worlds might command tens of thousands of dollars or more. (At a cynical level I would make the case that by taking a page from the playbook of "conceptual" art, the instructions to create these works - and the exclusive right to reproduce them - could be sold to collectors for tens of thousands. All that's required to pull it off is the marketing genius of the likes of Mary Boone or Andy Warhol.)
My claim that world-class Pastry Chefs are among the most talented artists in the world is also easy to explain. How many other artists can you name are expert in so many different media and techniques?
They need to know the technical qualities of several forms of crystallized chocolate and how to cast and mold it in many different ways. Same for sugar: Pastillage, pressed sugar, cast sugar, blown sugar, pulled sugar. They need to be superb sculptors able to imagine and then erect complicated structures in three dimensions ranging from massive pillars to delicate lacework fans, globes, orbs, and delicate flowers that would astonish Mother Nature were she to see them. They also need to be superb illustrators and command great skills with airbrush and other painterly media. This combination of skills alone should classify great Pastry Chefs among the most accomplished artists of this (or any other) era.
But wait! There's more! No other art medium than pastry also requires its master practitioners to be experts in taste. Not only do great Pastry Chefs have to have the skills to produce beautiful showpieces, they must also create masterworks to be eaten: Plated desserts, petits gateaux, entremets, entremets glaces, bonbons. Not only must these artworks be individual visual works of art they must also taste good. Pastry chefs work in layers and merinques and glazes and caramels and pralines and ganaches and gelees and foams and brix and tastes and textures and more and more and more and and and ... an astonishing range of media and techniques that should confound anyone who truly took the time to sit down and question what was really going on in the atlelier of a world class pastry chef.
As I did for 8 days in July. As I hope you'll do.
Comment
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Comment by Clay Gordon on July 21, 2009 at 10:43am - Michael: I like the analogy a lot (don't see too many [any?] timed sculpting/painting/glass/etc. competitions - but it would be fun to pose the idea and see what the reactions are), but I also want to say that my observation holds up outside the context of the competition setting. They are superb artists asked to be superb in an astonishing range of disciplines and they don't receive anything like the recognition they deserve.
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Comment by Michael Schneider on July 21, 2009 at 10:27am - Not to mention they have to create these masterpieces in front of an audience and within a strict time period. Let's think about that for a minute. "Hey Andy - I'll bet you can't paint a Campbell's soup can in 3 hours in front of the Art Critics Institute of America. Oh, I almost forgot, we invited 7 of your colleagues to paint for that same three hours and the best painting wins."
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